Zero Day: A Jeff Aiken Novel

An airliner’s controls abruptly fail mid-flight over the Atlantic. An oil tanker runs aground in Japan when its navigational system suddenly stops dead. Hospitals everywhere have to abandon their computer databases when patients die after being administered incorrect dosages of their medicine. In the Midwest, a nuclear power plant nearly becomes the next Chernobyl when its cooling systems malfunction. At first, these random computer failures seem like unrelated events.

Techno-thriller that gets the tech right

It's not all that common that authors who use technology in their stories get the tech right. Mark does that very well. Since I have a background in..Show More » tech, getting it wrong would have really taken away from the story. Instead, this was great for a long road trip so I could keep listening.

Trojan Horse: A Jeff Aiken Novel, Book 2

It’s two years after the Zero Day attacks, and cybersecurity analyst Jeff Aiken is reaping the rewards for crippling AlQaida’s assault on the computer infrastructure of the Western world. His company is flourishing, and his relationship with former government agent Daryl Haugen has intensifiedsince she became a part of his team. But the West is under its greatest threat yet. A revolutionary, invisible trojan that alters data without leaving a trace has been identified, roiling international politics.

5 STARS: Russinovich Is Tranformative

Somewhere in the middle of “hunt For Red October it clicked. “Yoa!” I thought, “This is a new something… a genre… if not a new species, well at least ..Show More »a new breed.” So I read the next 16 (or was that 18?) Clancys… Until somewhere in “Shadow Warriors”, or perhaps “Search and Destroy” he lost his power to fly the class he created (and never recovered them in his own attempts at cyber-fiction).

“Trojan Horse” goes “CLICK!” Mark Russinovich has accomplished where Neil Stephenson and the aging Clancy failed. Issac Asimov argued that if science did not drive the plot, it was not "science" fiction, but fiction in drag. Clancy at his best did the same thing with his techno-fiction where a sort of electro/mechanical engineering drove the plot. Russinovich’s transformational technology-driver has done to Clancy’s breed what the internet has done to newspapers… This is a disruptive book.

While “Zero Day”, the first in this Jeff Aiken/Daryl Hagen series, was engrossing –Russnovich was experimenting with his powers. I enjoyed it, and recommend that you read or listen to it before starting this book since it explains the allusions to that story peppered through “Trojan Horse”. But while each of these books are VERY commercial and crammed-full with action (cinematic is the word that comes to mind), Russinovich is sucking on the cyber-pipe full-on here in “Trojan Horse”.

BTW, this is NOT a Jeff Aiken book. While it’s a partnership, Daryl Hagen is now the stronger member of this pair. I hope someone at Audible will fix that in the series description.

Johnny Heller does a fine, if not masterful, job of presenting this work even if his characters are incompletely nuanced. Still, I won’t do anything to pull all five stars away from “Trojan Horse”. It’s as masterful as “DaVinci” code in its story telling clout yet "cyber"-fiction in the Asimov sense.

This is a cross-over novel that every adventure/mystery lover can enjoy and the best adventure book I’ve listened to in years.

Rogue Code: A Jeff Aiken Novel

Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys revealed how high-frequency trading has created a ruthless breed of traders capable of winning whichever way the market turns. In Rogue Code, Mark Russinovich takes it one step further to show how their grip on high finance makes the stock market vulnerable to hackers who could bring about worldwide financial collapse.

Formulaic

Never in doubt about the plot. A decent effort at explaining high frequency trading and the inside workings of an exchange. Narrator was difficult to ..Show More »listen to.